700 years before Gutenberg: the earliest printed text that can be accurately dated

[Shotoku-Tenno, Empress of Japan]. Hyakumanto Dharani.

€ 65.000,00

A rare example of the earliest printed text to have survived in Eastern or Western cultures that can be verifiably dated, predating the movable type of Gutenberg by some seven centuries.

In the year 764 CE, the Empress Shotoku commissioned one million ("hyakuman") miniature wooden pagodas ("to") for distribution to ten major Buddhist temples in Japan. Known collectively as the Hyakumanto, each contained a small scroll on rice paper with a Buddhist mantra or prayer ("dharani"), which was most likely printed on a bronze tablet (although some scholars suggest wooden blocks were used).

The Mahayana branch of Buddhism had reached China from India towards the end of the Han period, around 150 CE. It spread from China to Japan in the 6th century CE, where it quickly established itself as the primary form of Buddhism. In Mahayana devotional practice, a dharani is a charm or prayer. Each of the Hyakumanto contained a dharani from the body of texts known in Sanskrit as the "Vimalasuddhaprabhasa mahadharani sutra", and in Japanese as "Mukujoko daidarani kyo". The six main sections of the sutra had been translated into Chinese by the Central Asian monk Mituoxian between 680 and 704 CE, and it became one of the key sutras of Empress Shotoku’s period. Chinese was the principal language of worship, as there was no formal standardisation of written Japanese at this early date; consequently, the dharani contained in the Hyakumanto were printed in Chinese script. However, unlike the main text of the sutra, the prayers themselves were not translated: "The charms were merely transliterated, the Sanskrit sounds being represented as nearly as possible by Chinese characters. It is these Sanskrit charms in Chinese characters that were printed and rolled up and placed in the wooden pagodas" (Carter, p. 37).

As well as being intended for the expiation of sin and the accumulation of religious merit, the prayers were believed to have apotropaic powers, each of these diminutive pagodas essentially forming a protective talisman to ward off evil spirits. Each of the Hyakumanto contained one of the six prayers or charms taken from the original Sanskrit sutra (Carter, p. 36).

Although it is questionable whether one million of the Hyakumanto Dharani were actually made, it would appear certain that at least several hundreds of thousands were - an unprecedented example of mass production in Japan, which came at great personal expense to the empress. We are certain that a small army of artisans was responsible for their creation: from the evidence provided by a maker’s mark on many of the surviving examples, it has been ascertained that no fewer than 157 artisans were engaged in their production. Most of the extant pagodas have lost their printed dharani, and those that have survived are typically in a state of decay: "Their fate after the 8th century was unhappy; by the modern period most were lost, with Horyuji remaining the sole temple that still maintained a collection. When the Horyuji collection was surveyed in 1908, there were 43,930 pagodas but only 1,771 darani. Today Horyuji owns 102 pagodas and 100 darani" (Yiengpruksawan, p. 235).

In the 20th century, a printed copy of the Usnisa Vijaya Dharani Sutra, known as The Great Dharani Sutra, was discovered in Korea. It is speculated to have been printed in the early 8th century. Printing in China is believed to have had its origins even earlier, in the 7th century CE during the Tang dynasty, and there are a handful of fragmentary examples suspected to be from this date in museums in China. However, the date of none of these specimens has been verified, and no comparable example of a printed document from such an early date has appeared on the market in recent times. In addressing the claims of earlier printing survival in Korea and China, Yiengpruksawan notes that "Both views warrant caution pending the discovery of documentation on its production compable to that which exists for the Hyakumanto darani. The Hyakumanto darani remains the most completely documented and firmly dated example of early printing" (p. 238).

Collectors hoping to locate other early examples of printing in Japan of such antiquity will be disappointed: after the commission of the Hyakumanto Dharani, mechanical printing in Japan went into decline. It remains unclear whether this was due to the cost of the endeavour or the ritualistic implications of the printed prayers. Woodblock printing of text would not be revived until the 10th or 11th century, with woodblock books only beginning to be published more regularly in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The Hyakumanto Dharani form an extraordinary class of artefact dating to the earliest period of printing technology. They also provide a record of the practices and beliefs of Buddhist society in Japan in the Nara period. Most extant examples are in Japanese collections. Most, if not all examples of the Hyakumanto Dharani found in Western collections can trace their origins to the Horyuji Temple of Nara, Japan. In 1908 a number of Hyakumanto Dharani were given to supporters who donated funds towards the maintenance of the temple. Other examples with this provenance are held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum (originally acquired by the British Library in 1909), and the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne.

A great treasure and rarity in the history of the printed word.